


While we may

by lilith_morgana



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-16
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2018-11-01 12:46:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10922097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilith_morgana/pseuds/lilith_morgana
Summary: He’s an odd man, Celia thinks. Unexpected, in every meaning of that word.Prompt-fic about Loghain and Celia and all those years between 'The Stolen Throne' and DA:O.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Months ago I was asked to write about Loghain and Celia in Gwaren and I don't know, got a bit carried away.
> 
> Title snatched from the renaissance poem _Song: to Celia [Come, my Celia, let us prove]_ by Ben Jonson.

_Come, my Celia, let us prove_  
_While we may, the sports of love;_  
_Time will not be ours forever;_  
_He at length our good will sever._  
  


  
They never go near Castle Gwaren.   
  
The children dare each other sometimes, make bets about who can walk closest to the old building, which one of them that can make up the best ghost story about it, that can leap into the vast garden that surrounds it and remain there with _the Orlesians and their beasts_ while the rest counts.   
  
Celia is brave, she walks the long path from the harbour to the castle without looking back once; her heart beats quick and hot in her chest but she ignores it, fastens her gaze on the horizon and walks.   
  
Up close it’s not a place for ghosts and ghouls. The old stones are merely tired, badly cared for and seldom repaired. She stops in front of the main entrance where oil would be needed for the massive wooden door; traces her fingers along walls and defenses, imagining what the castle would look like if someone lived here. Someone other than Orlesian lords and ladies who spend a night or two if they absolutely need to. Celia has heard her parents talk about it, heard the voices laced with contempt and something that sounds like fear.   
  
She has learned by now, because she’s nearly a woman grown with _a sharp head on her shoulders_ , that grown-ups can be afraid of people with power. Of _superiors_ , as her father sometimes says, his voice hard and sharp around each letter.   
  
Celia swears solemnly and with herself as the only witness, that she will never allow herself that kind of fear.   
  
  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
  
They never go near Castle Gwaren.   
  
There are Orlesians in it sometimes, prancing about in the city streets with golden masks over their sneers like they belong there, have rights to the land. As though the soil beneath their feet aren’t unjustly borrowed from others, as though they have earned it fairly.   
  
Most days they live their lives without ever being noticed. It’s not war, not the kind you read about in history tomes and hear old people discuss in the tavern. It’s quieter, like something moving in the shadows around their homes; it’s less visible, like a disease carried by the sort of insects that will ruin the crop and bring bad luck all summer; it’s hidden meanings, long glances and the pace in her own steps as she walks home after a day at her father’s shop, looking around for soldiers and guards.   
  
_This is our homeland,_ her mother hisses at times and there’s something frightening at the bottom of her voice, something endlessly, overwhelmingly sad. And there is a form of sadness, Celia knows, that becomes anger. Hardens like a gem. It’s the most painful kind because it isn’t soft and gentle; it’s sharp and ragged, has set out to _hurt_ .   
  
They mourn their homeland like wild beasts driven out of their own lairs and like wild beasts they lurk in the shadows, _waiting_ .   
  
Gwaren, Celia thinks, is a fierce wyvern and one day she will emerge from her slumber and defend her territory. One day she will drive the oppressors to the edge of the Brecilian forest, to the depths of the ocean and the Frozen Seas.   
  
They cannot drive her out.   
  
  
  
  
*   
  
  
  
  
They never go near Castle Gwaren.   
  
As the uprising storms through the city and even the poorest fishermen and beggars are finding the seeds of it in their broken bodies, Celia learns how to fight. The children she grew up with - some of them men and women grown already, some of them with new babies in their bellies and in their homes - gather in the evenings when the sun is low, gather resources and knowledge and she can feel it in every step, hear it in every beat of her heart.   
  
Rebellion. _Resistance_ .   
  
The Rebel Prince captures the castle and Celia hears the news as she’s carrying food and daggers hidden inside her clothes to the injured soldiers hiding in an abandoned farm up north.   
  
She can see the silhouette of the castle over her shoulder, in the corner of her eye.   
  
She never goes up there, has her hands full as it is.   
  
  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
They never go near Castle Gwaren.   
  
Not even as peace falls quiet and certain like snow around them and the air is full of promise and _long live the King, long live King Maric!_ In the marketplace in Gwaren people argue about how long it will take for the new regent to declare Gwaren’s teyrnir lost, an ancient artefact buried under new ruler with new rules. Ludo, the miller, claims the vassals will have to swear their fealty directly to the king now, that times have changed.   
  
“That would be an _absurd_ change,” Celia protest as she places her eggs and her butter in her basket and wraps her coat tighter around her shoulders. It’s spring but a cold spring, still on the verge of winter. “And it sounds too complicated.”   
  
“They don’t care about us, lass.”   
  
They, she thinks. These days everyone knows who _they_ are: the mysterious rebels, emerging from the outskirts of Ferelden, from remote battles more fitting in a storybook than a town nearby, from the land itself. The Rebel Queen who died for her cause and then her son, the Rebel Prince and his little band of outcasts - poachers, freeloaders, knights and lords - doing the impossible.   
  
“No,” she agrees. “They likely don’t care very much about us. But they care about Ferelden. Otherwise they would not have endured such a bloody rebellion.”   
  
She can hear them disagree with her even as she walks away.   
  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
Three months after the occupation ends, Celia meets the Teyrn of Gwaren.   
  
But first, strictly speaking, she meets the teyrn’s soldiers.   
  
It’s spring proper - warm and dry and lush and nobody wants to be indoors so the rowdy crowd outside her father’s shop could be anything, anyone but it is, she learns as it enters, a group of men and women in fine-looking armour. Rowdy - and _armed_ \- guests and her father’s gone away on an errand; she can see her mother’s face close around a quiet worry. Celia swallows.   
  
“This is not a tavern,” she says when they’ve been inside the building for a short while; her eyes fall on the taller man who stands quietly in the commotion, holding up a hand to stop the rumbling, boisterous noise of the others. And she recognises him from the painting and that day in the town square when he greeted them, she _does_ , of course she does, but she cannot stop now, because that would shame her worse than this.

“You are speaking to the Teyrn of Gwaren, girl,” one of the ale-stinking soldiers barks. “Show respect!”

Celia clenches her teeth, not taking her eyes off the teyrn.

“Perhaps you need to remind your men that this is not a tavern, _your Grace_ ,” she says, addressing him according to form but with the hard edge to her voice that her mother uses, reprimanding merchants and beggars. The teyrn is hardly someone she ought to reprimand, but she catches the faint ghost of a smile on his face as he watches her doing just that.

“Get out,” he commands the soldiers, still looking at her.

She doesn’t even have the time to thank him before he, too, is gone.   
  
The following day her father returns home saying the _bloody teyrn himself_ had shown up, asking to buy as many cabinets as they could offer him. Said the castle’s empty, needs furniture.   
  
Her mother smiles into the stew she’s making for supper and Celia sets the table quickly, a triumphant sort of beat in her body.   
  
  
  
*  
  


Three months and two weeks after the occupation Celia is informally elected - by plenty of people gathered in the Fisherman’s Rest by the docks, their bellies full of ale and a cheerful sort of anger - as a representative for the people of Gwaren. It’s been a year full of discussions at the marketplaces and taverns, she’s voiced countless of opinions and changed her own mind a few times but she’s still slightly surprised to see the unanimous spirit behind the decision.   
  
And so she walks the path to the castle again, older now and even less afraid. If the Orlesians didn’t kill her she doubts the teyrn will.   
  
He’s not in the castle.   
  
Celia finds him by the harbour in a tent and the mere sight of it angers her. A bloody _tent_ for a teyrn! He may very well be what he has heard some call him when they think nobody’s within earshot - a commoner with no common sense, a thug in Orlesian armour - but he has been in Gwaren for nearly a month now without bothering to do anything with the castle and that is _unthinkable_ .   
  
“Your grace.” She stands in the middle of the tent before she knows it, hands on her hips.   
  
“Yes?”   
  
He looks up from where he sits on the ground, drawing lines on a large map of the coastline. Planning the repairs, she assumes. Rumour has it he’s going to pour all of his current resources into fortifying the coastal defenses. Now he gets to his feet, by way of greeting her she supposes, but she has a hard time looking away from what he’s working on. Never did know how to stay out of other people’s business.   
  
“The city needs attention first,” she says, nodding towards the map. “You will not gain popularity by focusing your efforts here.”   
  
The teyrn scoffs, evidently not even offering her a reply. Arrogant bastard.   
  
There’s a whole group of workers outside the tent, along with soldiers she hasn’t seen before - not the drunken fools he first came to Gware with at any rate. Celia looks around, over her shoulder and behind the teyrn’s back; she’s trying to find something, a thread to grab hold of and pull, anything that will tell her what sort of man he is this low-born commander who is now governing the place in Thedas she loves with all her heart.   
  
He’s not much older than her, Celia can tell. His face is composed but young, an ageless sort of structure to it. Hard, sombre. He will probably look the same in thirty years from now, carry the years in his chest, not his face. They say her mother does, too.   
  
They say a lot of things about their new teyrn, of course. Speak of his past and his present, gossip about his late father and his motivations. _Came from nothing, won it all_ and the weight of such a journey both anger and inspire.   
  
She imagines a fraction of the rumours is true; she is intrigued to find out which parts.   
  
He catches her gaze and holds it. “What is your name?”   
  
“Celia, your grace. My father is the cabinet-maker-”   
  
“I remember.” That ghost of a smile again, brushing over his face.   
  
“I wanted to speak to you.” She exhales, shifting her weight and wishing they were sitting in a comfortable spot in the castle. Or anywhere but a tent by the ocean, truly. This is a conversation made for proper drawing rooms with furniture and places to hide your thoughts.     
  
“Go ahead,” the teyrn says, gracefully not pointing out the fact that she has been talking for a while now without seeking his permission.   
  
“We are worried about the castle,” she says matter-of-factly.   
  
“Castle Gwaren?”   
  
_Are there any other castles around here, you fool?_   
  
She nods. “Indeed.”   
  
“The castle?” He says again; she can hear the doubts in his voice, the growing impatience that he seems to make an effort to suppress. Intolerance for other people. Other people, other minds. She wonders briefly if that is his greatest flaw, one he is working at overcoming. Curiosity would be hers, in his position. Curiosity and that nagging little tone at the back of her mind telling her she and she alone knows how to solve other people’s troubles.   
  
“It’s going to be a ruin soon. It has been badly damaged by the Orlesians, as you may have noticed. You _have_ been there, have you not?”   
  
“Of course I have.” The irritation isn’t suppressed now and he looks restless, as though he’s eager to leap to his own defense. “And I have decided it’s not worth the trouble.”   
  
“Not worth the _trouble_ ! Your grace, that castle _is_ Gwaren. That’s where this blasted city rose once. Our history is in those walls, now more than ever!” It’s her parents’ history speaking through her, it’s her native soil clawing at her voice, wanting to be heard. She imagines herself as a wyvern, defending her territory against intruders and he _is_ , even if he was the one who drove out the tyrants and rode through the fields like a hero he’s also an intruder and he can never be _her_ hero if he disappoints them now.   
  
“Gwaren is part of Ferelden,” he says; at the bottom of his voice she can hear a faint trace of doubts at his own words. It hammers in her, igniting her hope like wildfire. “Ferelden has scant need for castles, it needs strong borders.”   
  
_Borders_. As though borders cannot be breached. As though borders are not breached and broken every day. Celia looks at her hands, her blunt nails and her calloused palms.   
  
“Castle Gwaren is a symbol, your grace. If you restore it you repair what Orlais tried to conquer but could not tear down.”   
  
The teyrn seems to consider her words, turning them over in his head for a heartbeat. He frowns as he studies her face, then he averts his gaze and shakes his head. One hand raking through the thick black hair next time he speaks.   
  
“It’s too costly,” he says. “It cannot be done.”   
  
Something snaps in Celia’s chest, like a twig breaking under the sole of her shoe.    
  
“None of the freeholders will fall in line behind a teyrn who does not care about the lands he governs!” Her voice is high now, high and loud and she hates how vulnerable that makes her, what wounds her passion reveals. If this man in front of her is anything like they say, he’ll take advantage of every weakness; she cannot afford public sentimentality.   
  
But the teyrn is not a composed man either; when their eyes meet now his flare up like fires, the pale face reddening with emotion and anger.   
  
“Do not tell me I don’t _care_!” he says - nearly _shouts_. “Don’t you _dare_! I have fought the Orlesians with my own hands-”   
  
“They fought the Orlesians, too!” At least some of them did, Celia thinks, but now is not the time for going back to adjust her own statements. “They didn’t have fancy armour like you but they fought with what they had. Every day, for years. Don’t you _dare_ pretending that they mean nothing to Ferelden.”   
  
“I don’t,” he says then, calmer for a moment. He runs a hand over his forehead, two fingers rubbing the bridge of his nose. “But surely they must see _reason_ . They will understand that victory means sacrifices. Sacrifices that I have made and will make-”   
  
“And you don’t think burying your sons and daughters are sacrifice enough?” 

“That’s hardly-”  
  
“They celebrated the day they heard a commoner had been made Teyrn of Gwaren,” Celia cuts him off, cheeks flaring red and hot. There’s a lump in her throat and she pushes it back but it keeps rising, keeps making it hard to breathe. “Ferelden needs unity now and what better way to unite the people than giving a teyrnir to one of their own? If they had known you would treat this place worse than the bloody Orlesians they would never have fought with the rebels in the first place!”  
  
The teyrn looks like he’d want to throw something against a wall - she had seen him flinch at the word Orlesians, had spotted repulse written all over his face - and she wonders what keeps him from it. Is it because she is a woman?  Because she is not one of his soldiers? Or because he’s an honest man who knows deep down that she is right? Celia folds her arms across her chest, hoping for all their sake that it’s the latter.   
  
She waits for him to speak  but he seems almost frozen. Then he nods towards the entrance of the tent, his face hard and neutral.   
  
“See yourself out,” he says eventually.  
  
Celia exhales, feeling an odd blend between defeat and triumph.   
  
“Your grace,” she says, curtly and leaves before he’s found further reason to ask her to.   
  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
Summer has them all captured when Celia returns to Castle Gwaren to see if there is any truth to all the flights of fancy she keeps hearing - if the teyrn is repairing the outer walls and southern defenses like the blacksmith, Mira, claims. _Visited the other day, wanted to buy some ironwork for the courtyard. Stern fellow._  
  
The sun is low by the time she arrives, low and pressing, blinding her if she looks in the wrong direction or straight ahead, but even so she can tell the rumours have been founded in reality. The teyrn’s men are working hard at patching the half-ruined stone wall that surrounds the main entrance and it even appears some of them have started on the windows and doors of the nearby barracks.   
  
The teyrn is there, too, she notices. With the sleeves of his shirt rolled up and his thick hair pulled back in a bun, he’s carrying stone for the new section of the wall, piling them up at the far end of the area. When he sees her he pauses, nods and then carries on as though there are no hierarchies between them, no form or protocol to be expected.   
  
He’s an odd man, Celia thinks. Unexpected, in every meaning of that word.   
  
She walks towards him, past the other men and women and a part of her wonders what they make of her second visit here when they are all aware of how her first ended. Everyone knows about that, she can tell most of Gwaren has heard. _Did you know Celia, yes the cabinet-makers’ Celia - have you heard? Went and told the sodding Teyrn of Gwaren he was no better than an Orleisan lord!_ And these soldiers. There’s something about their stances and maneuvering across the courtyard as she walks there that tells her they’re fiercely loyal to their teyrn. Fiercely loyal, some of them even _protective_. That fascinates her, she must admit. The brilliant, ruthless commander of King Maric’s army is hardly a person in need of protection but what you need and what you’re given can be two wildly different matters, Celia knows. It also makes her want to understand the reasons behind it, the man in question.    
  
She stands a few feet away from him now, watching him wipe sweat off his brow using his arm and the back of his hand. The sweat lingers there when he turns to her, lingers like a tangible proof of his efforts. She wonders if it’s a deliberate thing, to do the same kind of work as the workers he pay or if it’s a natural instinct. A commoner, the rest of Gwaren echoes in her memory.   
  
She wonders, too, why he’s such a quiet but beckoning _distraction_ whenever she lets her mind free and allows it to wander to the assortment of thoughts about him.   
  
Clearing her throat, she meets his gaze.   
  
“I see you are not too arrogant to value advice, after all.”  
  
He studies her, his face unreadable.”I did not expect you to return. _Celia_.”   
  
The last word - her name - he adds with a different kind of texture in his voice and it flutters about in her chest.   
  
“Did you not?” she asks, offering him a hasty smile.   
  
He pauses for a beat. “I did,” he admits then, and if he had been the smiling sort Celia feels certain there would be a smile on his face now.   
  
It isn’t, but she counts it as one all the same.   


	2. Chapter 2

  
  
  
Four months after the occupation ends, Celia stands in the castle’s great hall, looking around to inspect the new windows that teyrn has had custom made and ordered from a carpenter in Denerim. That’s what they say, it’s the talk of the town.   
  
_Had the poor bastard ride all the way here to deliver them_ , they say, too.   
  
Celia suspects it might very well be the truth and she has to restrain herself and her much too honest mouth not to point it out to him as something that can look absurd in the eyes of the villagers in Gwaren. They want no fancy lord, let alone a commoner playing the part of one. Judging by the opinions voiced to her as she became the representative, they want someone who is fair and firm and will rebuild a war-torn city, shape their broken confidence once more. If the enemy attacks they want to feel reasonably convinced that they could endure for a while, hold out while waiting for the cavalry to arrive and not fall like toy soldiers made out of wood and get slaughtered or occupied once more.   
  
That is why they all endure his whims, why there is admiration and even _desire_ wedged in between the gossip by the docks and at the merchants’ square.   
  
They haven’t forgotten the war, will never forget the war and he drove out the Orlesians.   
  
“They _are_ gaudy,” she says, nodding at the elaborate decorations. Windows are practical matters, she’s slightly irritated with him for not seeing that. Or for not caring.   
  
Beside her, the teyrn shakes his head.   
  
“They are _windows_.”  
  
“Things are rarely that simple.” Celia turns around, leaving the painted glass behind in order to look properly at the most powerful man in Gwaren. Perhaps in all of Ferelden, rumour has it. _Queen Rowan or the teyrn, now that’s where those orders come from, I’ll say._ “I thought you’d know that, your grace.”  
  
His face - pale, harsh, yet somehow less so now that it’s become more familiar to her - is still and restful as he watches her. Something curious has crept into his gaze.   
  
“Why would I know that?”   
  
The war isn’t something they speak much of, not in the castle. That’s the _thing_ about war, Celia thinks sometimes, that the vastness of it doesn’t let itself be put into words, confined in proper questions and answers and it itches inside her because she has _questions_. Demands, even.    
  
But she won’t ask them, not as long as his gaze darkens at the mere mention of Orlesians, of battles, of the sacrifices they’ve all made because it’s been asked of them or perhaps forced out of their bodies with violence. _Were you forced? What did you do? How do you sleep?_ _  
_ _  
_“Because you’re a clever man,” she says instead, shoving the darkness behind a forced light.  
  
The teyrn doesn’t respond at first, merely holds her gaze. It thaws something inside her, that focused stare of his, the sheer _force_ of it. He’s a man of war, a violent man by all accounts and yet she’s alone here with him, all alone in his half-ruined castle and there’s no fear in her. Not even a thread of it running through her thoughts as she stands, inches away from his broad shoulders and stern posture, that angry little _hitch_ in him, in everything he does. But Celia knows that wherever his darkness is directed, whomever it is aimed at, she will never have to fear him.   
  
“Not half as clever as you, I suspect.”  
  
Celia feels the compliment rattle through her, a slice of meat for a starved creature, tossed at random perhaps and with little care and she takes it anyway. She wonders if he knows. If he senses the hunger in her, the long-forgotten needs that war and duty and stubbornness has tried to shed but never quite managed. She’s hollowed out, desperate enough to turn to someone like him.   
  
Or perhaps, she wonders as his gaze opens up before her, as the stone-shaped teyrn melts into the man he must have been once. Perhaps it’s not desperation. Though regardless of what is is and isn’t, there’s nothing but foolishness to be had from it and Celia turns away, folding her hands together as she takes a few steps away from him.   
  
“I’ll return in a fortnight with more demands from the people of Gwaren.” The words stumble out of her and she nearly winces. “Your grace.”  
  
He raises an eyebrow, apparently unmoved by her ridiculous display of emotions. Then he simply nods.   
  
  
  
* _  
_ _  
_ _  
_  
The next time they meet, it takes approximately two seconds before they argue about the re-opening of a road stretching from the forest to the harbour.  
  
Celia claims it doesn’t take priority; the teyrn has already decided to devote men and resources to its final restoration and will hear none of her complaints. There is nothing to stop their discussion from turning into a debate that slips further into a full-blown argument within moments.   
  
It might be, she realises afterwards, that she calls him a foolish pretender, a _thug on a throne_. A ridiculous claim, even in the heat of it, because there’s no throne in Gwaren and she doubts this man would want one, either. He’s a fool, but not a _deluded_ fool.   
  
“What did you do to anger the king?” she asks when his irritation seems to have subsided somewhat and hers have faded into slight embarrassment. It is increasingly likely that this shall be her last audience with the teyrn which means she might just as well pose all the questions that appear in her mind. Her mother says she is _incurably curious_ , after all.   
  
“I beg your pardon?”  
  
Celia sighs, looks around at the still completely unfinished garden. In her mind there will be roses everywhere. The stubborn kind, roses that survive wind and rain and winter without flinching.   
  
“Gwaren is hardly a reward.”   
  
“Did you not just say you love Gwaren and would never leave?” Loghain’s blue eyes are fixated on her.   
  
“I do and I won’t. But it’s an awful, _awful_ place.” She finds herself grinning at him. “Two things may be true at the same time. You of _all_ people ought to know that.”  
  
“And why is that, pray tell.”  
  
“Because you’re a hero and an utter _bastard_.”   
  
Immediately after the words have escaped her, Celia looks around for witnesses. No one’s within earshot and it might be a blessing, considering her behaviour at present.   
  
The only one who’s heard her little outburst is the man in front of her, the man who’s watching her intently with his arms folded across his chest.   
  
“I would remind you that I am also your teyrn,” he says, though there’s not as much anger in his voice that it should be, than he has every right to express. Celia finds it oddly intriguing. For someone as proud and vain as the Teyrn of Gwaren he’s very generous with her, allowing her all sorts of liberties and she cannot make sense of why that _is_. How did she get the upper hand here, if that is what she has? What _is_ it she has?   
  
“Ah, my mistake. Make that three things then,” she quips because although the reasons behind it elude her entirely she feels drunk on the power it gives her. _Immortal_.   
  
That little spark in his eyes, the bottomless depths behind the icy blue. It’s impossible to look away. His voice has transformed into silk, the kind that her mother looks at, _touches_ , but always turns away from whenever they see it because it’s too expensive and they are not greedy people. _But I am, mother._  
  
“Would you speak this way to a high-born?” he asks.   
  
Celia doesn’t even have to consider her answer to that. “Oh, your grace, I _would_.”  
  
“Good,” he nods curtly, his mouth curling into a quick smile.   
  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
He sends her a letter.   
  
Curt, brief sentences written by a man who typically speaks through his deeds. The handwriting is remarkably neat, however; her gaze travels over curves and dots, slips between the contours and the blank spots between, the vast unspoken. She imagines what it says about him, that he writes so well. She imagines him at his desk, writing. Her mind jumps from images of his hands running over the parchment to his face, stern and unmoving, to his mouth --   
  
Celia tucks the letter inside her dress, keeps one hand pressed down over it all day when it first arrives. It’s a secret in there, between her practical work outfit and her less than practical thoughts, scattered all over the stones beneath her feet.   
  
He sends her a letter.  A small thing that shakes the world.    
  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
Five months after the occupation ends, Celia accepts an offer of assisting the teyrn as he supervises the castle’s restoration efforts.   
  
It’s not as dreadful as she would have imagined, not half as ghastly as the whispers around them would suggest. Though these days the suspicion has subsided, leaving room for much more elaborate and romantic interpretations of the young commander turned teyrn. _Romantic_ and those suggestions tugs at her heart, pulling at the corners of her thoughts.  
  
It’s not dreadful at _all_.   
  
In fact, Celia must admit that she finds it pleasant.   
  
Most days she spends up there with him they walk around in the vast garden - she has a hundred ideas for improving it but keeps them to herself, guarding them or saving them, eager to have a collection of things to speak of - or sit poured over maps and drawings. He poses a question or two about the castle, Celia tries to steal an answer or two about _him_ , about the commoner who joined forces with the rebel prince. The stories people tell have gone to her head, she thinks sometimes. Softened her mind.   
  
Five months ago she would have thought it made no difference who he was before he became the teyrn, before he shifted into what he is now, to them all. It would never have been a fragment of a thought in her head, would not be a concern or an itch to scratch.   
  
Five months ago he was _nobody_ ; now she throws him a glance as he raises his hand to rake it through his hair - too thick, she thinks, it turns into too much of a mess to just leave it undone like this - as if every motion holds a clue to something else.   
  
“You’re quiet,” he says, his voice even.   
  
Celia shrugs. “The castle is almost finished. I have little to add.”  
  
For a moment neither of them say anything else. Then the teyrn clears his throat.   
  
“There is the matter of the garden, of course-”  
  
“It’s terrible,” Celia cuts him off. “ _Dreadful_ , in fact. I have a hundred suggestions for how to improve it.”  
  
Something lights up in his eyes and it makes her dizzy.   
  
“Speak to Marte in the stables when you have time.” He looks away, eyes fastened on the windows ahead but Celia feels as though he’s staring at her. “She will fill you in.”  
  
She nods, her mouth too full of words to speak them.   
  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
“I’m having supper in a while,” he says the following week as they finish looking at a drawing of the second floor of the improved castle layout - a few restorations and a whole new chantry. Celia’s always been a rather devoted chantry goer and had pointed out that praying in the original chamber would feel like sacrilege after the castle had been in Orlesian hands for so long. As though they had defiled it, spoiled the faith itself. The teyrn had nodded, serious and silent, and though she highly doubts he’s much of a chantry-goer, he had added a new chantry to the plans. “Would you like to join me?”  
  
Celia raises an eyebrow. “Supper?”  
  
There’s a moment’s silence. A moment’s silence as the boundaries and restrictions around them shake and shiver, trying to replace each other perhaps or escape entirely.   
  
“Food,” he says and the tone is different now, a little bit sharper. “I haven’t poisoned it.”   
  
“I didn’t say that.” She feels irritated, too. Tired of his lack of patience with her, exhausted from attempting to decipher their relationship. The teyrn of Gwaren wants to dine with her, Andraste’s arse, what should she make of that? And why does he refuse to understand how complicated things are?  
  
Because he doesn’t understand them any better than you do, silly girl.   
  
The realisation is a warm breath inside her lungs, a soft thud against the bones in her chest.   
  
“I could stay for supper,” she says, eventually.   
  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
The stretched backdrop of the sky beyond and above the castle one night when Celia walks with teyrn Loghain across the courtyard, down along the path leading to the harbour. He is still renovating it, she can tell, though the efforts are more widespread now, the perspective not nearly as narrow as before.   
  
A military mind needs to be balanced by a political one, she thinks. And the people down in the taverns and marketplaces agree, she knows they do because it’s suddenly the only thing she seems to _hear_ when she goes about her daily routines. Speculations, wild guesses and far-fetched rumours about which noblewoman the teyrn will wed now that he appears to have accepted his fate and settled down in Gwaren. _He’s handsome_ , some of them say. _Stern but handsome. Not a bad match for a young lady._   
  
And Celia cannot disagree, even though something jars in her at the idea of the teyrn marrying, the thought of some highborn woman sweeping into Castle Gwaren - the castle _she_ has been made part of now, its stones carrying her mark - to make changes or any sort of impact on it.   
  
It’s not about the castle.   
  
She glances sideways at him where he walks beside her. Tall and composed, his eyes on the horizon and his mouth a thin curve against the setting sun. There’s softness in his face, of course there is, but Celia understands why others rarely see it. She thinks sometimes - vain and quite possibly deluded - that he’s only showing it to a handful of people, perhaps not even that. That she’s somehow-   
  
_No_.   
  
This is a sentimental notion and she has no patience with those; she is in all things a sensible, reasonable woman who must not trap herself within impossible expectations. That is, her mother echoes in her head, the _undoing of every sensible creature_.   
  
“If I asked you to marry me, would you say yes?” the teyrn says suddenly, his voice low but clear, sharp as though the question has been ready for a while, resting at the back of his tongue.   
  
Celia stops walking.   
  
Around them Gwaren slows down, too, the day’s nearing its end and she looks at it, the place she loves more than anything she can imagine; then she looks at the man by her side.   
  
“Ah.” She swallows; he catches her gaze and for a beat she thinks she can spot nervousness there, a fluttering sort of worry. It hits like a hammer blow, heavy and hard. “I would. _Yes_.”  
  
The teyrn spins her around then, his hands around her wrists and his face lighter, almost someone else’s as he looks at her, properly now. He’s certainly __intense , she thinks, smiling at the way he seems to study her now that they’ve removed one of the borders between them, lowered their defenses. For all her lack of fear, Celia almost feels shy in his presence. It’s just a moment, a mere fraction in time, passing briefly.   
  
Then she rises up to pull him down, one hand around the back of his neck, to kiss him on his lips.   
  



	3. Chapter 3

  
  
On their wedding night, Celia sits cross-legged in the large bed in what is now her bedchamber in Castle Gwaren; she still wears the dress her mother had made for her with equal parts enthusiasm and badly controlled nerves. _My Celia, a teyrna!_  
  
There’s a soft rustling sound by the door as Loghain enters.  
  
Her _husband_ .  
  
All evening she has turned the thought over in her head, tried to grab hold of it and anchor it deep inside but it keeps slipping out of reach. Though they had asked to host a very small ceremony the King of Ferelden had not listened, apparently, and instead they had found themselves hosting a massive feast in the newly repaired castle. Loghain had looked tense as the guests swarmed around them, had deliberately stared at furniture and walls, as though trying to will the reality to shift at his command, opening a hidden escape route for the two of them. Or perhaps just for _him_ , Celia is not so certain they have forged that sort of intimacy yet, the kind that would allow her to be included in his dreams of flight.  
  
“Are you tired?” he asks and something in his voice hits a spot at the back of her mind, a little jolt of anticipation travelling down her spine.  
  
She shakes her head, gets to her feet and takes a few steps towards him. Loghain meets her halfway and scoops her up in his arms.  


*  
  
  
  
In the beginning, people often say, things are simple.  
  
For them they aren’t, not even then.  
  
  
  
*

  
  
  
Gwaren recovers.  
  
As the months pass and the seasons come to an end around them, the teyrnir stops bleeding and starts healing and Celia stands in the middle of the process, feeling _part_ of it the way Loghain never seems to. He’s there, too, but the dull grind of days bores him and the slowness of certain matters crawl beneath his skin, testing his temper as well as his patience.  
  
“You must treat them with respect,” Celia snaps as he dismisses a few farmers who claim that their lands are being invaded by poisonous giant spiders. “Listen to their complaints without interrupting.”  
  
“They simply want my coin and our time.”  
  
She looks at the men who walk away, their slumped shoulders and angry stance.  
  
“Even so, Loghain.”  
  
“We have more urgent matters to attend to.”  
  
“More urgent matters than our teyrnir?” Her voice is a blade, cutting deep into the air between them but he doesn’t let it wound him. Or if he does, he merely chooses not to let it show. He’s proud after all. Much more proud than she would like her husband to be but you cannot hope to change a person’s soul. Her mother has told her that, recently.

Relenting, Celia looks at him and smiles. A slight smile, a still somewhat _irritated_ smile but as far as truce gestures goes it’s passable.

Loghain may not be a nice man or a particularly kind man but he is, she knows, a _decent_ man; he's respectable and he treats her well and works hard, shunning the ways of the nobility as much as he can. There's a hard streak in him, a touch of uncompromising, unforgiving strength but no trace of cruelty and she looks into his eyes, knowing she will never have to fear him.  

Some days that is enough.

 

*

 

Some days nothing is enough.

He is impossible: brooding, tempestuous, closed-off. She argues with him until something in her breaks and he walks away from the castle, not returning until nightfall. They stumble into each other’s arms immediately then, hands under skirts and tunics and Celia pants his name with her mouth buried in his thick hair.

She is impossible: proud, stubborn, nurses her grudges even more than she nurses her garden, her household, her dream of one day having children. They would fill up the old keep. They would fill up all the hollow spaces the war has left inside them.

 

* 

   


King Maric, once, a moment out of time and carefully hidden behind a polite smile:

“You care for him, I take it.”

She almost bites her lip, trembling a little bit on the titles and social graces but nods, fervently.

“He is my husband, Your grace.”

“Do you... love him?”

“I do,” Celia replies, after some consideration. It seems a terribly odd thing to ask someone and he seems to know this at least, because he scratches his head awkwardly as he nods.

“Good.” He nods, staring into his half-emptied goblet of wine. “That is... that is _good_.”

She wonders, for many years, what had happened for him to ask this, for him to need this from someone else. Wonders as she watches her husband command the knights and draw strategies for the development of Ferelden's army with that hard glint in his eyes, what he has done to lose the love of the King.  

 

*  
 

 

Queen Rowan, the only time Celia meets her, stooped over the crib where Anora lies awake, watching:

“She has Loghain’s eyes.”  
  
There’s a chill in her tone – _sadness_ \- buried beneath all the royal composure and Celia folds her arms across her chest as protection against a past she does not wish to learn anything about.

  


* 

 

Anora is the heart of the castle.

Very early on, long before Celia understands she will never carry another child - long before she watches her own body betray itself, bleeding out five pregnancies in five years; Loghain is not there for a single one of them - it becomes clear to them that their daughter is the sun and the moon.

A beacon in the restored rooms, a streak of sunlight among the stone and the buried hardships.

Very early on, long before Celia understands Anora will be their only child, it becomes clear that Anora is her father’s daughter. By choice, certainly, but there is something deeper, something stronger.

“You're my heart,” Celia tells her every night, kissing her forehead.

“When will father return?” Anora asks, every night, leaning into her mother's hug.

They have a good life, the two of them. They rule Gwaren, Celia claims occasionally. The two teyrnas. At the tender age of seven Anora is already more skilled than Loghain when it comes to talking to the farmers and the fishermen's wives; at eight she charms a noblewoman from the Free Marches into considering a new trade route.

They have a good life and when he can, Loghain joins them for slices of it.

He is rarely at home but when he is, when he does arrive, everything around them come to a halt for a moment that stretches out for days sometimes. Because he is home their ordinary lives take a step back and when she's in a foul mood Celia thinks of it as an interruption but Anora always runs headlong into it, unrestrained like a wild horse. Her arms around Loghain's neck, his hand patting her hair, a motion growing less awkward with each year that passes.

 

*

 

She loves him faithfully, in the shadows and in front of the people of Gwaren. In their private chambers and in the kitchen as she instructs the servants to prepare his favourite meal before he returns from Denerim, restock his wardrobe and armoury.

He loves her quietly, in deeds more than words. If she asks him to, he sends her letters from his travels but they are sparse and curt, offers her very little. He returns home with rare books for their library, herbs for her garden, things that will improve and build upon the castle.

Once she asks him to tend to her garden while she is away.

Anora laughs when Celia tells her. “Father?”

“He wasn't born a teyrn.” Celia folds a spare dress and places it on the bed, ready to be packed. It's a task for the maids but she has always enjoyed housework, putting her hands to use. “Your father is clever enough to solve this quest.”

Naturally, he doesn't. He forgets or never even intends to remember, she does not know which. It hardly matters.

What matters is that when she looks at the roses, the once-beautiful garden and then looks at Loghain, his eyes widen and before she's even had time to yell at him, he's gone. Hours later he returns behind a wall of leaves and thorns; it rains but he smiles at her and Celia feels her entire body crack into a smile back.

He lets her clean the cuts from the new rose bushes that evening, lets her sit in front of him, her fingers tracing the oddly domestic wounds on his arms while he looks at her. Roses, not swords. It won't even scar. She wonders if he knows how much she would care for him like this if he let her.

For the way he wants her opinion on political matters and the way she knows, in her heart, that he would never shame her with other women or bastards, never let anyone laugh at her; for the way he trusts her with Gwaren and the way he talks to Anora - not condescendingly like many men to their daughters but respectfully, losing his temper only when she does not quickly understands.

For the rosebushes. For the rosebushes alone, Celia would care for him for the rest of her life.

"When are you returning to Denerim?" she asks, looking up. His gaze is firm and dark, immovable as the invisible threads that run around and between them. Their confinements.

"In a fortnight." The lines around his mouth are visible in this light, making him look old beyond his years. But then again, he always has. He had already lived a lifetime when they met.

Celia dresses the deepest cut in a bandage as Loghain begins to tell her, in few words, about the latest disturbances in King Maric's court. She doesn't need to listen to know what he says because he always says the same things. Constant motion, perpetual flight and she wants to rein him in, pull him close.

"Loghain," she interrupts. "Thank you."

"I-" he frowns, hesitating a second before sealing the conversation with a brief nod and a half-smile, sardonic and hard to interpret. Indeed, most people would never even recognise it as a smile. "Very well."

Celia leans forward and kisses him because Maker knows she isn't most people.  

 

*

 

The ocean doesn't sit right with her, that summer when she falls ill.

It's the way it seems to be possessed by a strange, unknown power, something always moving. Unreliably, insecurely. She's had enough of people running away from her for a lifetime; she stops going to the harbour, stops leaving the castle grounds entirely.

And Loghain in all his frantic, frustrated energy finally comes to a halt.

 

*

 

It's a slow illness; they have two more summers in Gwaren.

Two more but this autumn will be the death of her.

“The herbalist I sent for-”

Loghain sits by her bed like a statue or a piece of furniture, refusing to leave. His hand reaches for her, hard and callous and _loving_.

“They have done what can be done, Loghain,” she says, very softly. This, she thinks, this is what nobody knows about him. What nobody sees in him. Yet she knew it from the moment they met, learned it and sensed it and _felt_ it – his need for her. How indescribably lonely he will become without her. What it will do to him.

“I won't _allow_ it.”

She would smile if she wasn't so tired. The kingmaker in him, the general's voice that would shout back at the Maker himself. _I order you to attend to this matter at once!_ Despite all of that Celia has loved him; despite the shadow of tyrant in him, the darkness he contains.

“You will have to,” she says.

He lets out a deep breath, his voice a whisper. “I… can’t.”

The same room, later, when the skies have darkened around Gwaren and winter is drawing closer, its breaths giving the windows a coat of frost in the mornings.

“Come here, love.”

She thinks about the wyvern, about Gwaren, about the family she's sworn to protect and Loghain lies down with her, carefully positioning himself at the edge of her bed, one arm around her. This man who saved their country, who let her save her home, who gave her a life of importance – _Anora_. She wishes she could stay, has a feeling she is needed but there is little use struggling against the Maker's plan.

 _They cannot drive me out_ she thinks, feeling his hold of her hand tighten, his fingers pressing more urgently against her knuckles.

They cannot drive her out, so she has to take her leave.

  
  
  



End file.
